


Memories

by NotEvenThat



Series: Introspective Magnus Drabbles [6]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Faded Memories, Immortality, Introspective Angst, M/M, Magnus Bane-centric, Magnus' POV, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-25
Updated: 2018-08-25
Packaged: 2019-07-02 08:17:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15792639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotEvenThat/pseuds/NotEvenThat
Summary: Magnus' greatest fear was that one day he'd wake up and not remember Alec at all.





	Memories

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't posted anything in months and then I finally have the time and inspiration to write something and of course, it's another introspective angsty thing surrounding Magnus' character! Of course! Because that seems to be what I love writing most!
> 
> Also, I just wanted to say if anyone was curious: I haven't really posted anything because I've been really busy with summer classes. My fall classes start next week (Monday actually), so I don't really know how much time I'll have then either but I tend to write more when I'm actually driving to school (my summer classes were online). So, I hope I'll get out of my funk and be posting more! Maybe something with more plot next time.

Magnus woke up one day late in the eighteenth century- or maybe it had been the seventeenth. He stopped for a moment and pondered the haze in his memory, the gap where he couldn’t quite place the events of his life. It didn’t really matter, Magnus decided after a moment. It didn’t matter what century it had been. No one was even going to realize Magnus couldn’t place the moment, not here, not alone in his head and if he ever shared the story out loud, he would choose a century with a definitive tone and then that would the truth of it. Maybe he’d say it was the seventh century when it had really been the eighteenth or hell- maybe he’d even go on a whim and say the fifteen when he knew that it was certainly not that long ago.

It was an interesting thing, how warped and muddled memories became when you lived as long as Magnus did: How the details and truths mattered less and less as the years went on. It didn’t matter what century Magnus had woke up that one time because there was no one at all around who had lived to be able to call Magnus out on his bluff. There was no one at all left that had shared that moment who could tell Magnus, ‘No! That was the sixteenth century!’ There was no one to prove him wrong or even tell him. There was no one left that had bared witness to Magnus’ life that long ago.

So, it didn’t matter anymore. The truth had been lost on the world and Magnus was a lone survivor, left with a scattered memory that he couldn’t place. He never admitted it though. That was the thing, he never admitted that he wasn’t quite sure when something happened or that he couldn’t remember anymore because it had been so many years since then. He always just pretended that he knew and in that, he changed the truth of it even in his own mind. 

Magnus told Alec of a vase he had in the late fifties. He told Alec about the color in passing- it had been burgundy- and how it had fallen off his shelf and shattered against the marble floor that had been laid out in his country home. 

The vase wasn’t burgundy. Magnus was thinking of a completely different vase than the one that had fallen once, it hadn’t even been anywhere near the fifties. Magnus’ country home did not have marble floors, his Spanish one had and yet, the moment he said it his mind decided that that was how it had happened and Magnus was none the wiser that he had fooled himself. He spoke it into existence even though the reality was far different.

Magnus wondered how his memory would fail him in the years to come. He wondered if one day, he’d be telling someone of Alec and he’d misremember the color of his eyes. Maybe one day, he’d say in passing that his lover had had green eyes and after that, that would be the reality Magnus remembered, even as flawed as it was.

He wondered how many years it would take for him to forget the sound of his voice. For his memories to become so warped that the sound of his lover’s voice would shift in his head, until it was something that didn’t resemble Alec at all, even though Magnus wouldn’t recognize the shift himself. 

It was like he was waiting for the boiling water, sitting in a pot as the temperature grew higher and higher, except Magnus was expecting it. He couldn’t stop it. He couldn’t get out but he knew that one day, he’d wake up and the water around him would be in a rolling boil. 

People often assume that warlocks have little relationship with time. Why would years matter when compared to the centuries they were bound to live? Why would a decade scath him, why would Magnus bat an eye at the loss of even a century? He had forever. 

Magnus thought that warlocks understood time far more than anyone else. People rushed by, barely even sparing a moment on the things that mattered, the things that would make them happy. They had so little time. Their lives were so fleeting and yet, they spent every second denying themselves the things they truly wanted anyway. Magnus had wanted to shake them before. He thought of Will Herondale, he thought of Woolsey, he thought of Axel. Why? Why did you spend so much time suffering, when you had so little of it to begin with? 

Magnus understood time far more than he imagined his finite counterparts ever would. They always spoke of how quickly things happened. Of blinking and finding oneself years from where they’d started, so close to the end. 

Magnus saw it as it happened. He always had or maybe, he hadn't. Maybe, when he was younger he had experienced the world as anyone else did. Maybe, he blinked and found himself fifty years old, halfway through his first decade, shocked at how quickly the world had passed him by. He didn’t remember it if he did though.

Magnus saw the years pass by in his Alexander. He saw the lines grow on his face, from the years of frowning, years that even doing Magnus’ face masks with him could not erase. Magnus saw the scars that he had seen when they were torn, wrecked mangles of flesh turn soft and fade as the years went by. He saw the color fading from his hair, which had once been so dark. 

It happened suddenly for Alexander. He looked in the mirror one morning and asked Magnus if his hair was turning gray. Magnus had noticed months ago. He’s seen the first gray hair and with everyone that followed after, everyone Magnus noticed with rapid obsession, he felt something in him crack. 

“I hadn’t noticed.” He’d said, easily. 

Of course, he’d noticed. How could he not when he spent more and more nights a week laying awake while Alexander slept, taking in the sight of his lover and savoring it, for he knew it would not be a sight he would have forever. 

They took so many photos. Magnus took so many videos. He saved every voicemail Alec left on his phone but it wasn’t going to be enough. The pictures would fade. They would deteriorate. The videos would be lost eventually, as would the voicemails. Technology increased so rapidly. Any trace he had of Alexander would become obsolete eventually. They wouldn’t sell a camera or a laptop that could play his videos and eventually, even the files themselves would become corrupted and lost, someday. 

The only thing he’d be left with was his memory and even that would fade and wither eventually, until they were corrupted and lost. Not that Magnus didn’t try. He tried so hard. He tried harder than he imagined he’d tried to remember anything. It became a ritual for him.

So often, he would watch Alec doing something and think, ‘I will remember this. I will remember this for as long as I can. I will remember the feeling of his lips on my forehead. I will remember the sight of him making breakfast in the morning, with his messy hair and his sleepy eyes and his soft, happy smiles. I will remember the way I feel when he carries me to bed. I will remember him in his entirety. I will cling to the feeling of his heart under my hand and his breath against my face, so that I will remember when he is gone.’

Magnus didn’t think it was going to make much of a difference. He had no control of the toll the years took on him but when Alec asked, a laugh in his breath, joking, if Magnus would remember him forever, Magnus had said, “Of course, I will. How could I forget the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me? How could I forget my angel?”

Something inside Magnus cracked. Another tiny fracture in the wall he was sure would not break open until he was truly alone. 

It had been so easy to say. Magnus heard his own voice echoing in his head. ‘Of course-’ like it was just that easy, like it was obvious, like there was no alternative. Of course, Magnus would remember him. Of course. 

Magnus closes his eyes at night, long after Alec has succumbed to sleep and he prayed- though he had not been religious in a very long time- for the years to be easy on him. He prayed for the world to let him remember every detail of Alec and the life they made together, even after everyone who had experienced it with them was gone. He prayed that he would not soon forget the color of Alec’s eyes or the way his voice sounded when he was excited or the soft exhale that always left his lips when Magnus finally stepped out of his closet after spending an hour getting ready. 

Magnus prayed and when he finally fell into sleep, nuzzled in the crook of Alec’s arm as he snored softly above him, he had dreams of things he could only half remember and faces that were blurred and messy. Somewhere in there, Magnus saw faded beautiful eyes and a smile that turned his heart to mush, though he couldn’t quite make out the lines of his mouth or the dimples in his cheeks. 

Magnus woke up crying. ‘Will you forgive me?’ He had asked, though he had intended to never speak his worries out loud, to never break Alec’s heart with the truth of what would happen, eventually. ‘If I forget, will you forgive me?’ He’d begged into the skin of Alec’s neck, clinging to him like he thought if he let go he would disappear. 

‘Of course.’ He had said, like it was so easy, like it was obvious, like there was no other way. ‘Of course, I will.’ 

Something inside Magnus cracked. 

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on tumblr at Facialteeth (I post this weird stuff there as well but also, I'm really looking for new people to follow so if you post content you think I'd like come hmu and I'll probably follow you).


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